Earlier this week, I spoke to a group of young professionals, most of whom are conservative. And one of the conversations I had was with a person who was asking me about the link between culture and politics, arguing—as others I know have—that culture is “upstream,” and therefore in many respects more important, than politics.
This question reminded me of a passage from the late Alexander Bickel’s book The Morality of Consent, which deals in part with the competing traditions of Locke-Rousseau and Edmund Burke in Western thought and in American constitutionalism and political process:
The unexamined life, said Socrates, is not worth living. Nor is it bearable. To acknowledge no values at all is to deny a difference between ourselves and other particles that tumble in space. The irreducible value, though not the exclusive one, is the idea of law. Law is more than just another opinion; not because it embodies all right values, or because the values it does embody tend from time to time to reflect those of a majority or plurality, but because it is the value of values. Law is the principal institution through which a society can assert its values.
That statement seems to me to be quite right, and a nice rejoinder to those who say—with what must be barely a moment’s reflection—that we cannot “legislate morality.” In fact, we have legislated/legislate morality all the time—from slavery and segregation, to abortion and same-sex marriage, to welfare and environmental laws, to crime and drug use, to immigration policy and the global AIDS initiative, to much else. Jerry Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts of child abuse because we decided to legislate morality. It’s even said by some, mostly on the left, that the federal budget is a “moral document.” The law is, in fact, the most comprehensive embodiment of what a free society believes. It tells the world, and each other, who we are and what we believe.
This is not to downplay the significance of culture, which is enormously important to a society. But culture is, in some respects, subconscious and pre-social. The law, by contrast, is something that is actively thought out. That doesn’t mean it’s always well thought out, of course. But laws are a self-governing society’s conscious, willful expression of a set of beliefs and convictions. And among other reasons, that is why politics and government are, for all the complaints we (rightly) might have about them, terribly important and, at their best, something of a high calling. That’s worth bearing in mind even, and maybe especially, during a particularly ferocious presidential election.
So the the law against cannabis represents the value of denying medicine to the sick? n nThe law against opiates represents the value of persecuting minorities (the origin of the law according to historian Charles Whitebread) ? n nOr perhaps the Prohibition laws are an expression of our preference for stupidity given the experience with alcohol prohibition. n nOr maybe they are an expression of the willingness to ignore the Constitution by "Constitutional" Conservatives (where is the Drug Prohibition Amendment?). n nEither there is something wrong with your thesis or there is something wrong with American society.
Whatis, n nYou already have direct Democracy. You are endowed by your Creator with rights. You can defend those rights by any means you choose up to and including killing the violators. See how easy that is? What? They might kill you in the process? Then you are not serious about your rights. Thus you have none. If MEN stopped acting like sheep then they wouldn't be treated like sheep. n nIf every carload sent to the camps had taken out one German the trains wouldn't have run for years. They would have run for weeks and millions would have been saved. n nYou are not bound by any legislation that violates your rights. No matter what "society" and their legislatures thinks.
I respect that any article written in Commentary, and/or by Wehner, (and anywhere else for that matter) is a trigger for, and an invitation to discourse with no arbitrary limits. n nWhat is sad to me, though, that we, as a culture, have pretty much lost the ability to try (put to trial by learned and disciplined reasoning) the thoughts and observations of others. More often, what is seen are leaps to conclusion based more on self-interest, enlightened or otherwise. The temptation to "cut to the chase" (also influenced by facets of modern popular culture) often appears irresistible. n nThis is unfortunate, because it reflects a clinging to fashion (in its broadest sense), rather than a appreciation for cultivation of the whole mind. I honestly thought that the thrust of Mr. Wehner's invitation to thought and discourse deserved a progressive (small p) {going forward or onward; passing successively from one member of a series to the next; proceeding step by step} reception. I suppose, if there is something to blame for the dearth of orderly discourse and reason in OUR culture today, it might be the loss of value, within both formal and informal education, whether external or by self-education, to clarify) placed on the classics of thought, word meaning including etymology, and the clearly documented progression in the discipline of reason going back many hundreds of years. Expanding on that, I might add, is a short view of human history, again, due to the fashion of short-cutting learning in favor of any number of styles and purposes of TRAINING, including indoctrination. n nThere has been in the past, a view of the nature of politics, that the politics within and among states, revolved around the success or failure of war and peacemaking. Both war and peacemaking have the potential to make people free, or make people slaves. In some cultures, the most 'worthy' of warriors were skilled in peacemaking as well, and also learned in the classical sense, and not merely trained. If the pen is mightier than the sword, spoken words are mighty as well. Leaders understand this. What we suffer today is a dearth of leadership, which, at its best, finds ways to identify common values among quarreling factions. To take one example, the topic of medical use of cannabis: Here we have an anomaly, because there is a stalemate between the stance of 1:How broad stands the power of the Federal Government and discretion in enforcement of the rule of law, versus 2. How compelling is the power of natural rights, science, and simple common sense. Here's one problem: Can railing about common sense and credible observation sway the adherence to power among the elite (however they got to be "elite"). Well, probably not, at least according to history, I think. Did Congress, by delegated authority, have the "right" to take away a sick old lady's weird little houseplants? According to natural law, absolutely not. According to the Supreme Law of our Land, oh YES. Do the people have the power through peaceable means to change that? (maybe not for a lady who is already dead) But yes, they do have the means. Leadership to this end (policy change) will depend on the skill, wisdom and reason of the opinion leaders related to topic of medical marijuana. Maybe they can first make some "hay" on industrial hemp, and learn the "ropes" from there. As to Culture and Law, they have mutual, and progressive influences toward change. If we didn't learn that from Prohibition's arguments pro and con, results good (?) and bad (!) what have we learned about anything in this nation's political character? n nMaybe there is something of merit to be said that culture has a quality of subconscious and "pre-social" meaning. But the most rudimentary law is the first-born spawn of that quality. this is what we call Natural law. It has everything to do with n"I am, let me be! I am whole, because you are whole and are with me .I found this, it is mine. Sharing is my choice, not yours. I made this, pat me on the back before men. I have a voice, my sounds are my power. There are things I see, and things I do not see, that are real, as I feel those things." n nPositive Law (meaning man-made law) proceeds only as culture expands. Just me, just saying, the quality of culture has a direct impact on the justice to nature to be derived from positive law. nThanks. Mr. Wehner, et al, for yanking a thought out of me on this otherwise uneventful day. n n